Ralph Lopez's blog

Dr. Ramazan Bashardost, 2009 Afghan presidential candidate, scholar, and former Minister of Planning, is accepting donations for Afghan landslide victims. Dr. Bashardost's history of outspoken criticism of corruption from all sides in Afghanistan, and his integrity beyond reproach, has earned him the title 'most honest man in Afghanistan.' In an email to friends and supporters Dr. Bashardost has assured that 'every penny' of donations made to the designated account will reach the neediest victims directly.

Washington - With over 2,000 truckers estimated by organizers due to start arriving in the nation's capitol today, anti-NDAA activists have announced a call campaign to Congress to demand it enact one of the truckers' principle demands, repeal of the NDAA. The National Defense Authorization Act, or the NDAA as it has come to be known, authorizes the US military to detain US citizens without charge or trial, indefinitely, in secret, upon mere suspicion of involvement in terrorist activity.

The truckers are carrying the message "Restore the Constitution." They are gathering at a staging area in Virginia today and will be descending on Washington, DC tomorrow.

Having had their Facebook page shut down by Facebook administrators earlier this month, a group spearheaded by the Independent Truckers of America is calling for a three-day 'buy nothing' period from October 11 - 13.

The execution of six Afghan development workers by the Taliban last month who were doing work for the NSP, the Afghan National Solidarity Program, may be a sign that after 11 years, development may be starting to work. The attack signaled an escalation in the violence previously aimed at foreign non-governmental organizations like the Red Cross, and western corporations and their employees. The NSP is an indigenous program which, until now, insurgents have pretty much left alone.

When Bradley Manning deployed to Iraq in October 2009, he thought that he’d be helping the Iraqi people build a free society after the long nightmare of Saddam Hussein. What he witnessed firsthand was quite another matter.

At the words "they arrived to carnage," the CNN Anderson Cooper report cuts to helicopter footage of seven police officers charging across a parking lot and toward a school. It is breaking news coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting just hours earlier. The three-minute report posted on the day of the shootings at the official CNN website is entitled "Tragedy Strikes at Elementary School." But the school the police are seen 'arriving' to is almost certainly not Sandy Hook.

Psychiatrists have come forward to assert that certain psychiatric medications, such as those known as SSRIs, are almost certainly the chemical cause of a large number of instances of random violence and suicide in which SSRIs have been present.

The research challenges the pharmaceutical industry's defense that the high correlation between random violence and the presence of these medications is due to the mental illness, not the drugs being prescribed for the illness. Other critics of the industry claim that drugs tend to be too aggressively marketed and over-prescribed.

You could have knocked me over with a feather that the major media was talking about the Bradley Manning trial at all, after years of being confined to the progressive Internet, but although it is important for Manning's treatment in virtual isolation be a focus, the real story is being ignored. One of the reasons Bradley Manning is where he is in the first place, is because he was reporting a war crime.

No matter what Manning's treatment, many Americans, not always the most big-hearted people, will believe Manning deserved every bit of it unless context is provided. The CNN reports on the trial which have run so far delve no deeper than his complaints about being forced to stand naked, not being allowed to sleep, and being harassed under a bogus "suicide watch" by being asked every five minutes "are you okay?"

Amy Goodman's Democracy Now captures a surreal scene. Stein contention is that there should be a return to League of Women Voters criteria that "anyone who does the work to be on the ballot in enough states to win electoral vote" should be allowed to debate. As the arrest is taking place, the arresting officer can be heard professing concern for the flag Dr. Stein and her VP Cheryl Honkala are holding, and that no one step on it by accident.

This video clearly shows that Jill Stein is one gutsy and classy lady.

After a years-long media black-out and a grueling battle to get the film shown in the US, The Prosecution of an American President, the brainchild of the Los Angeles County prosecutor who prosecuted Charles Manson, opens at theaters this week. In its long trek to the American big screen, the movie was originally scheduled to be run on HBO before the channel dropped it at the last minute. Bugliosi then had to go outside the country to find a producer, Windsor Ontario NAFTC Studios.

Many of you remember the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV), a remarkable group of young people in Afghanistan who are working to create a peaceful future, through the teachings of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others. You may have been on, or heard of, the monthly Global Conference Calls for Peace, which has connected thousands of like-minded youth and activists around the world to discuss a vision of a world without war. Guests of the Conference call have included Noam Chomsky. Now two of the youth,Abdulhai and Ali, both 15, have been invited to speak to young peace activists and others in the US.

After 89 Democrats in the House voted in a victory for bipartisanship for HR 459 to audit the Federal Reserve, some jaw-dropping numbers are emerging as a result of a partial audit conducted this year. It is no surprise that the news is dropping with a dull thud in the media. That's why you should get your news from the Internet and sites like this.

Prompting even the judge to express bewilderment at the prosecution's unusual withholding of a new indictment against the NATO 3, Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Betterly, a grand jury on Tuesday returned the indictment after the three were arrested for allegedly planning to recruit people to throw Molotov cocktails at police stations, attack Obama campaign headquarters, and other targets ahead of the NATO protests in Chicago last month. The arrests took place after police infiltrators, acknowledged by the CPD, infiltrated the apartment where the three were staying.

More Than Entrapment, More Than a Frame-Up, the Crucifixion of the NATO 3, Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Betterly. The NATO 3 are scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday, June 12.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, rarely in history has so much been so wrong with a case in which so much is at stake. The story of the NATO 3 is either the story of the most inept, harebrained terrorists in history meeting the Keystone Cops, or a terrifying retaliation by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's police department for the posting of a Youtube video which documented illegal police behavior.

The National Lawyer's Guild attorney for the three men charged with a major terrorist plot at the NATO summit in Chicago says they are being subjected to severe sensory deprivation. On the same day, the prosecution requested, and was granted, a delay of a preliminary hearing until June 12, in order, the Chicago Tribune reports, "to give prosecutors more time to assemble the case against them."

Three activists in Chicago for the NATO Summit protests — Bryan Church, Jarred Chase, Brent Betterly — are being charged with a major terrorist plot and "material support for terrorism" after they posted a video of police threatening the three with violence during the NATO summit. The terror attacks were to include numerous Chicago police stations, Obama’s national campaign headquarters in the Prudential Building, and Rahm Emanuel’s home in Ravenswood. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) contends the charges are fabricated and that the arrests are retaliation.

The Pentagon has disputed a contention by Robert Bales' attorney that his client was "upset" over a friend losing a leg to a roadside bomb, in the days prior to his alleged massacre of 17 people, including women and children, in two villages nearly two miles apart in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has asserted that there was no such bombing. AP has reported that Afghan officials and villagers say that immediately after an IED attack, US soldiers rounded up locals and promised that there would be retaliation, including the killing of children. The AP reported:

In a striking omission to mainstream coverage of the Afghan massacre which took the lives of 17 Afghans including many children, one as young as two, the AP has reported that US soldiers came to their villages after a roadside bombing two days before and promised retaliation. The Pentagon has denied that any bombing took place, putting it in direct contradiction to the attorney for Sgt. Robert Bales, who alone is being accused of the rampage.

The first story was shaky from the start, that Sgt. Robert Bales "sneaked" off a combat outpost into hostile, landmined territory in the middle of the night, walked north a little over a half mile to a village, engaged in bloody murder, then walked back that half mile, past the base, and another mile south, killed more people, then turned himself in at the gate, all within an hour. Sharp-eyed bloggers did the math and recalled from other reports that Bales has part of a foot missing from a wound in Iraq, making the feat all the more remarkable.

After a deadlier than usual Afghan winter for young children, in which at least 40 children under age 5 have frozen to death, the British Afghan Women's Society is ready to launch an air cargo of warm baby clothes, baby formula, and other items which is the result of an outpouring of sympathy by Britons and people from around the world. Londoners and others responded overwhelmingly to calls for donations of such items last month, after it was reported in the media that many babies had frozen to death in the exceedingly harsh winter.

The airlift is scheduled to take-off from Liege Airport in Belgium on Saturday, 24 March.

I want a better deal on the hatred we are buying. The subway service in my town (Boston) is about to increase fares, again, and cut back service in a semi-yearly ritual of crapping on the poorest in Gov. Duval Patrick's state, in a week when the US will toss another $2 billion at military operations in Afghanistan which seems only to keep generating more hatred for Americans.

At $2 billion every week, I say that's too much. I'm sure there are better deals on hatred. And thanks to a fearlessly outspoken line officer, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, we now know what we don't know about Afghanistan.

The Army is keeping mum on whether the Army sergeant who went on a rampage in Afghanistan has ever been evaluated or asked for evaluation for PTSD, but it is well known that in recent years the culture of the military has been to sweep such problems under the rug, in order to redeploy as many soldiers as possible. The Army has acknowledge that the soldier had been diagnosed with a "traumatic brain injury" after a vehicle rollover in Iraq. The soldier was on his fourth combat tour.

Moreover, the base from which he deployed, Ft. Lewis-McChord, has been plagued with soldier suicides and stateside violence, and is under investigation for allegedly dismissing large numbers of legitimate claims of PTSD.

The annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the conservative lobbying group which favors "enshrining" in U.S. law that it is "U.S. policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons," was met with the full-blown Occupy Wall Street treatment last week by OccupyAIPAC, which seeks to stop the drumbeat for war with Iran which threatens to destabilize the world. The media and congressional saber-rattling is opposed by a vast majority of Americans according to recent polls. A CNN poll last month found that:

As the US continues to strenuously ignore and underfund the only development program in the country which works cheaply and effectively, the Afghan National Solidarity Program (NSP,) which is at arm's length from the Karzai government and which gets management help from the World Bank, and as it has instead wasted around $15 billion since 2001 on showcase projects that Afghans never asked for, using Washington-connected American contractors who take 40% or more in profit before the work ever begins, child malnutrition has edged up in the country from 54% in 2005 according to the World Bank to 60% according to Save the Children in a recent NBC News report. The grim statistic follows the recent freezing deaths of dozens of children under age five from the bitter cold in the squalid refugee camps in and around Kabul, the most secure area in the country.

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